This year in game design, I have learned a lot of new techniques and tools in 3DS Max. I have also gotten more experience in tools I learned last year, such as working with lights. I think my class will use these new tools and techniques to make more realistic scenes and animations in 3DS Max, involving light, and forces such as gravity and wind. I have also learned about new objects you can use such as premade trees, doors, and windows. With the trees, you can choose from many types of trees to use in your scene. In addition with the doors and windows, you can change many variables on the doors besides width, length, and height such as the frame size of the window, how many panes it has, and same with the door. You can also alter how the door opens, it can be hinged, sliding, or a double door. My favorite tool this year is the forces tool. You can use it to add effects like gravity and wind to a scene, which can alter how objects act in the scene, such as how a ball drops, water flows, or which direction and intensity a flag waves. You can change how strong these tools are by changing the strength, and with the wind, how turbulent it is. By the end of the year, I hope to learn more about these tools and maybe learn some new ones too.
-3DS Max has a lot of cool tools and techniques to explore. -3DS Max has forces and premade objects to make your project more realistic. -My favorite tool is forces.
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Some video games have had movies made based off of them. One such video game is Angry Birds, which started as a mobile game back in 2009, which I remember playing back in 2nd grade on my iPad Touch. This weekend, I watched The Angry Birds Movie, and decided to compare it to the original game.
In the game, the player is given a set amount of birds of different types for each level. Each bird has its own name and its own ability. Some abilities are speed, bomb, or weight. The player must figure out how to use these bird's abilities to effectively destroy the pig's structure, who are the enemies. The structures are built out of different materials, such as wood, stone and glass. These materials have different strengths and the player must decide how to slingshot the birds at the structure to get it to collapse and kill all the pigs. The birds are attacking the pigs due to the fact the that the pigs have stolen the birds eggs to eat them. In the movie, the birds live on a utopian island where happiness is emphasized in society and everyone worships the mythical Mighty Eagle. The main character of the movie, Red, who is also the most famous bird from the game, has anger management issues and is an outcast from society. He is always grumpy and lives on the beach away from the bird's village. One day, he screws up by cracking a family's egg, and is punished my getting sent to an anger management class. All of his classmates are the birds from the Angry Birds game. Eventually, the pigs show up to the island one evening and are very kind to the birds, and throw a large party. All of the birds are very excited about this, except Red, who senses something is off. He and Chuck, also known as the yellow bird, and Bomb, explore the pig's ship and find a lot more pigs inside. Eventually over time, the pigs integrate themselves with the bird community, and the pigs start to show a creepy interest in the eggs, which they steal in the game, and that's exactly what happens next. While the birds are at a massive rave party the pigs built for them, the pigs steal all the eggs and blow up the bird's village. When the birds realize what happened, they abandon their happy, peaceful ways and become angry and warlike. They build a raft from what the pigs left behind and head to the pigs island. When they get to the pigs island, they launch themselves at the pig's city with a slingshot the pigs gave them earlier in the movie, and the birds use their powers from the game to start destroying the city, which is built out of wood, stone and glass just like in the game. the birds raid the castle and fight with the pigs for the stolen eggs, when the Mighty Eagle shows up and helps turn the tide of the battle in the bird's favor. The pigs launch a counter attack with aircraft built out of scrap which resemble aircraft from the game Bad Piggies, which is another game in the Angry Birds series, except where you play as the pigs. Eventually, Red fights with the king pig, and blows up the entire city. The pigs are defeated and the eggs are safe. The birds return to their island and treat Red as a hero, and build him a new house in the center of town. Overall, the movie was very entertaining, and the plot was very easy to understand, even for those who have never played the game. The movie was very brightly and colorfully animated, and there were a lot of innuendos in the dialogue, a few too many for a children's movie in my opinion. I wish the movie was longer, but based off the ending, I believe there will be another one. Some other movies that are based off of video games are Assassin's Creed, Warcraft, Mortal Kombat, Rachet and Clank, and Tomb Raider. I plan to check out Ratchet and Clank and Tomb Raider, as those games are more of my style, so I think those movies will interest me more. The game and the movie are similar in many ways: -The birds each have special powers to help them attack the pigs. -The pigs main goal is to steal and eat the eggs. -The pigs build their buildings and equipment in ways it can easily be destroyed by the birds. -The Mighty Eagle comes in when the birds are in deep trouble. -The game and movie were very similar, but had many differences too. -Overall the movie was very entertaining. -There are many movies based off of video games. This year in class, we have been working exclusively in 3DS Max. In my free time outside of class, I have been looking at the portfolios of professional 3D modelers and getting inspiration from them. One creator I have taken particular notice of is Franco Singh-Vigilante. He mainly uses Maya and has worked in 3DS Max to create his projects. This is a scene they made of some sort of industrial complex. I hope in the future to make models more like this. The last time I attempted to create a highly detailed building in 3DS Max was in Scientific Visualization class two years ago. I like how the buildings smoothly fit into the landscape, and how they included details on the building like the spaces in between the wooden boards and the bumpy surface of the tin roof. They also included stones in the wall and complex supports under the buildings. There is also a ramshackle fence and grass leading away from the buildings. The trees also have cool detailing where the leaves are square, but the tree still looks very detailed. I am really into architecture and city planning, so I think it would be cool to build a really detailed town or city in 3DS Max, even for a game. To improve my skills to be more like their work, I will try to retain the techniques I learn in class and download modeling software such as 3DS Max or Blender and practice at home. Specifically, I want to get better at lighting and cameras, because I barely know how to use these tools. I will try to experiment with them on my own time and make sure to do my best on my lighting and camera assignments when the time comes. Franco used lighting to give the scene detailed shadows and a camera to get a close up of the scene. I know he probably used the indent or chamfer tool to make the crevices in the wood, and the scatter tool to make the stones in the wall. I would really like to know how he made those trees. -3D Modeling programs have a lot of tools. -Working in 3D requires a lot of practice. -I should practice more outside of class. Here is a house I made in 3DS Max to mimic Franco's work. It is a gray building just like in his image, although in the future I hope to add textures to my buildings. To make this house, I used the extrude, bevel, and inset tools on a cube. The Image: Franco Singh-Vigilante's Blog:
This week, we will be ending our practice coding in C#. Next week, we will begin actually designing games. This is what I thought we would be doing from the beginning when I first took the class, but now, near the end of the second year, I am finally starting it. I am both nervous and excited. To prepare for making games, I looked up some information for novice game designers. I found this website which has some helpful tips I took note of to help me start my game making experience. A major component of game designing is to pay attention to the industry, especially to trends. You want to see what types of games players are into. You should also have a hobby in something like drawing or film, to help with the aesthetics of your game. Before you start, you should plan out your game, what will it be about? Who are the characters? Along the way, you should stop and test your game to make sure everything fits together.
-Game Designing is harder than it looks. -Start off simple. -Don't overwhelm yourself. -Expand your knowledge. -Plan! Last week in class, we started on coding (C#) using Unity and Visual Studio. We would write in the code in Visual Studio, then apply it to Unity, where it would run the code and affect the program. Our first task was to make the program say "Hello World".
So far, coding has not gotten too complicated, but you still have to follow all the steps carefully. One small mistake, such as a space where it shouldn't be or a misspelling, could make the code do the wrong thing or not work at all. If you misspell something, the program might not recognize a keyword, which tells the code what to do with the information after it. If you leave out a bracket or parenthesis, or mix them up, everything in the code after that could break. But in the end, when you code finally works, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Everything in the computer world runs on code, your web browser, your digital art studio, your video games, robots, even cars and planes. Code runs the program behind the scenes. Without it, the program would not function at all, nor would technology even be advanced as it is today. -Coding is stressful and complicated -It tells a program what to do -In the end, you will feel accomplished once you finish your code. -Code is very important and can be a useful skill For the past week, we have been working with 3D characters we created in Adobe Fuse. Previously, we animated them using a website call Mixamo. Now we are animating and skinning them in 3DS Max, which is more difficult, but you can create your own animations.
In 3DS Max, we imported our characters in as an OBJ. We then selected a preset that brought in a figure to inset in our character. We changed the dimensions of our figure to fit well inside our character, matching up joints and limbs. The figure is what tells 3DS Max where the parts of our character are. With Mixamo, we import the character as an FBX file from 3DS Max, after creating it in Adobe Fuse. Once the character has loaded in, we tell the program where the joints are by dragging circles to the location of these joints. We can then choose from a large variety of short animations for our character. -It is harder to animate in 3DS Max, but you can make custom animations. -It is easier to make animations in Mixamo, but you have to choose from premade animations. -You need an Adobe account for both. Link on 3DS Max Animation: https://youtu.be/fpU1yqsT8_A Link to Mixamo: https://www.mixamo.com/#/ In the past few weeks in class, I have been working on a drawing project outside of class. It is watching a series of tutorials supposed to teach me techniques on becoming a better drawer and things I should include in my drawings. The tutorials are on the Ctrl+Paint website.
The tutorials cover many different topics, but mainly how to increase your skills in drawing programs like Photoshop, but the skills can also be used for drawing with a pencil. Some videos just explain skills, while others encourage you to follow along or do an assignment on your own. After watching the tutorials, I think my drawing skills have improved, at least for drawing characters. Instead of starting off with one body part, like the feet and drawing that part in lots of detail, I tried to start off with a stick figure, outline important parts of the character, and slowly add more details. When I did it the other way, the character's body parts would usually be out of proportion. I would only be working on one part instead of carefully adding more details altogether. Doing it the new way, I can easily see the character's outline and I can tell if I am drawing something out of proportion. Ctrl+Paint link: https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/ |
AuthorMy name is Adam Servas, Categories
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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